There are too many reports out there about the roots of America’s epidemic of homelessness for us to keep blaming the homeless for their poverty. One of those roots many of us can remember very well.

It happened circa 1979 when, right there in Washington, D.C., during the Carter Administration, Paul Volker, chairman of the Federal Reserve, tinkered interest rates upward to combat ‘precipitous inflation’. It even reached 21 percent at one point. Almost immediately home construction stopped. Carpenters, plumbers, electricians, landscapers — a huge middle income demographic — were put out of work. Many lost their homes, real estate sales died, and even more families were broken as the following Reagan Administration cut funds for low-income housing projects — perpetuating the ruinous cycle among tradesmen and their supply system.

This was around 37 years ago. Almost all of the homeless we see in Chico today are people born into those families who were affected by D.C. ‘economic tinkering’, who were filled with fear for the future, who saw their children experience the shame of poverty as their “average American” dream disintegrated.

Call Congressman LaMalfa and senators Diane Feinstein and Kamela Harris through the Congressional Switchboard (202-224-3121). Tell them that they simply must make it a priority to end homelessness and start solving serious problems. And tell them, too, that Washington, D.C. is virtually burying itself in its own ‘hogwash’. We don’t deserve that.